Were your ancestors here, there and everywhere? Consult this clip-and-save guide to explain their confounding peripatetic ways.

Our ancestors’ migrations can be baffling. One minute they’re here; the next, they’ve up and moved to the other side of the state or across the country. Why did they go, and how did they get there? Knowing a little US geography can help. Perhaps a new territory was opened for settlement, or your kin were part of a broad population shift. This quick guide to America’s geographic past comes from the Family Tree Pocket Reference, a convenient collection of genealogy reference material. In an easy-to-digest nutshell, you’ll learn when new territories were acquired, what spurred large-scale migrations, how our forebears got from place to place, and more. Read on for answers to your ancestors’ wandering ways.